Parishioner Receives Celestine Distinguished Service Award
For those who can’t make it to Communion, Mary Ann Rasche brings it to them.
Rasche, 88, has been a Eucharistic minister for nearly 40 years, and she’s been delivering sacramental bread and prayers to the homebound since 1979.
“I get a lot of satisfaction out of it, and I get to see the people that don’t come to church,” Rasche said. “We help who we can.”
In the late 1970s, Father John Finis of St. [Peter] Celestine Catholic Church asked for volunteers to bring Communion to those that couldn’t attend, and Rasche volunteered, believing it was “just a good thing to do.”
Sunday, she was awarded with the Celestine Distinguished Service Award, an honor presented annually by the Celestine Park Committee to a Celestine resident in recognition of that person’s service and contribution to the community. Rasche, who’s from the rural Jasper area, is proud of the award, which was supposed to be kept a surprise but was spoiled before Sunday. She already knew she’d been nominated, but a representative from the Celestine Park Committee called to let her son Robert know that Mary Ann had won. She overheard the conversation because Robert had put the phone on speaker, like he usually does, to make sure Mary Ann can hear her calls. Rasche attended the award ceremony with 14 of her family members. She has nine children, 10 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Her late husband Ernest died in 1996. Mary Ann didn’t mind Sunday’s lack of surprise, she said, because it would’ve been overwhelming to find out in person.
“I’m glad that I knew it, because I think I would have fallen over otherwise,” Mary Ann said.
She won the glossy wood clock with silver, metallic columns and a quartz dial with large black, Roman numerals. Sunday didn’t mark the first time she was applauded for her service. In the 1990s, the Catholic Diocese of Evansville presented her a pin for the Simon Bruté award, but she prefers the clock.
“We’ve got other clocks, but I can read this clock from the couch,” she said. “It’s got big letters. I don’t have to turn around and look at the clock behind me.”
Mary Ann visits the homebound once or twice every month. During her most recent visits, she saw four different folks. She knows of their ailments but doesn’t ask much about what’s bothering them.
There’s the man with an oxygen tank.
“I don’t know why he has it, but he couldn’t breathe without it,” she said.
There’s the woman who’s too shy to go outside.
“She doesn’t feel comfortable going out,” she said. “She’s just so nervous.”
The most recent addition to the rotation, the man with a knee problem.
“He’s the fourth one,” Rasche said.
And finally, there’s the woman with Alzheimer’s who sometimes forgets she’s in her house but never forgets Communion.
“She always knows,” Mary Ann said. “She always asks, ‘Is this the day they come with Communion?’”
Mary Ann brings the Eucharist and an old, worn prayer pamphlet she’s had since she started in 1979. It’s yellowing and is held together by clear tape. Mary Ann can’t remember much about her first visits, but she does remember one thing about her acceptance of Finis’ call for volunteers.
“I didn’t think I’d be doing it this long,” she said with a laugh.
Rasche engages in small talk on her visits to the homebound if “what’s going on in their world calls for it.” But she’s mostly there to say prayers. She gets through Communion in about 30 minutes, starting with the introductory rites. Toward the end, there’s the silent prayer. Mary Ann and her friends sit in silence — the people who can’t leave home, and Mary Ann, the woman who has willingly left her home to help others since 1979. She doesn’t know what the homebound pray for during the silence, but she always prays for them. They finish with Communion — bread but no wine — and a closing prayer.
“I get more out of it, than I put in,” Rasche said. “I enjoy doing it or I would’ve quit a long time ago.”
The Message thanks The Dubois County Herald for permission to reprint this story and photo
